Coming of Age
by Unique Sandwich
Summary: When Saya met Kyougo.


**Coming of Age**  
by Kelsey

Disclaimer: I am not a member of CLAMP, sadly.

Warnings: Rather dark, considering what's actually happening.

Notes: Saya and Kyougo meet. And just so you understand the irony, daisies mean innocence, loyal love, I'll never tell, purity, gentleness, and romance.

--

A torn fragment of dreamstuff drifted before her eyes like stray cotton candy; a glimpse of watery depths, a tracing of phosphorescence over a sword, the graceful structure of a shrine. Curious, she reached out to touch the face of the woman that flashed briefly before her, only to have the vision vanish like smoke at her mother's irritated cry.

"Saya, what are you _doing?"_ Anger and fear entwined together; Saya knew that most of her family thought her mad, always seeing things that weren't there, forever saying with a laugh and a smile that she would grow up to die for the person she loved. Her parents did not trust her version of the future, although as she lacked the ability to predict anything for anyone but herself, she supposed it made sense of a sorts. Her mother looked tired, clad in her ill-fitting bathrobe and the aura of faint hopelessness.

"Thinking, Mother," Saya answered, voice soft as always. The taste of saltwater, or perhaps blood, filled her mouth, and steel tugged at her spine, pointing her like some sort of specialized compass needle in the direction of Togakushi Shrine. It had to be done tonight, and soon. The ocean roared in her ears, and she fell from her chair to make contact with the ground. She fought the urge to laugh.

Almost at once her mother was at her side, kneeling down to check for damages. Her family, convinced of her madness, of her weakness. She stared at the hand stretched out for her before climbing to her feet, form aloof yet strangely tender in the moonlight. Sighing, her mother rose to her feet and admonished, "Go to bed, Saya" before exiting the room, disappearing down the long hallway.

Minutes slipped by, and still Fate tugged her with greedy hands, danced her like a puppet on silken red threads. At last it became irresistible and she slid open her window, easily slipping out of her first-story bedroom and out into the cool night. She shivered at the touch of the breeze, and her nightgown swirled around her ankles. Her feet moved without any guidance from her mind, tracing a path they knew well already. She was free to take in Tokyo in the dead of night, and found it not lacking. The noise of the city gradually faded as she entered the wealthier neighborhoods, crisp two-story houses standing tall. A dog gave a sleepy bark as she stooped to gather a few daisies from someone's garden.

The woman's face floated by again, but she couldn't make out any details; she suspected she would never know the face of the woman she would die for until she met her. Soon, soon, it had to be soon, with the way events were occuring. Wheels and gears were turning. Perhaps a month until she met her at last. The street was wide and the pavement warm beneath her feet as she neared the shrine, slipping under its entranceway without a thought. He sat on the steps, as she knew he would, reading a book, one elbow hooked around a broom, a neat pile of leaves on the grass.

Holding the daises up to her face, she approached him.

It took him a bit to notice the change in the atmosphere, the tension of an approaching storm, the faint snapping of electricity--or perhaps what he felt was more akin to a drowning man whose last sight is the towering wave about to sweep him under. His eyes widened and he put the book aside, slipping a bookmark between its pages. "Miss, are you lost?"

"Saya," she introduced herself, discarding the use of her last name; after all, it was only her first name that was important, the name that gave the essential clue to her character. Everything seemed painfully clear without the softness of dreams to filter the harshness of the outside world. Now the dreams whispered in her ear, little sleep murmurs giving clues. Say this, do that, fulfill the Destiny you have chosen for yourself.

He rose to his feet, coming down the steps to stand before her, expression gentle. "Miss, are you all right? Do you need help getting home? Young girls shouldn't be walking by themselves at night."

She pressed the bouquet of daisies into his hands, giving a bright laugh at his evident confusion. The sound crystallized in the air, hung shimmering like a star between them, and then suddenly Monou Kyougo (for that was his name) smiled, charmed by the strange golden-haired girl that had so unexpectedly turned up at his doorstep. He admired the little bouquet to please her, sealing his fate as he did so.

"I came to talk to you because you're lonely," she said simply, not questioning the knowledge given to her by the dreams, patiently sketching out the best way to manipulate this man, this kind young man. A shy intellectual in high school, now twenty-four and with all of his friends busy with graduate school, while he stayed home to carry on the family tradition. Both parents dead, one lost five years ago to cancer, the other two years ago to a car accident. Lonely indeed.

To conceal his surprise, Kyougo turned to place the little bundle of flowers on the steps of the shrine. "Miss--"

"Saya."

"...Saya-san, what makes you say that?"

Unexpectedly, her eyes brimmed with tears, a torrent of saltwater threatening to break free too soon, too soon. "Because I'm lonely, too," she whispered, squeezing the words past the tightness in her throat. She saw Kyougo make a slight motion towards her, saw also the way he drew back, remembering his manners.

"Saya-san..."

And she pitched forward into his arms, dragged by the tide and the dreams, tears wetting the front of his shirt. She wept for herself, for the loneliness she had never put into words until this moment, for the knowledge that she had spent sixteen years of her life waiting, waiting, _waiting_ for someone to fill the aching void inside. She wept also for the knowledge that this man who would be her husband could never fill any of it; she had been born incomplete, without heart enough to love anyone but this woman she saw flashes of in the still silence of her mind.

She wept for the end of her childhood.

One hand came to rest awkwardly on the small of her back, and the other patted her head, and she drew a measure of comfort from the gestures, however amateur. Her sobs quieted and she looked up to witness the way his eyes softened as he looked at the little golden girl in his arms, the strange not-quite-child with extraordinary powers of empathy. She smiled, tilted her head back the way the dreams said to, let the moonlight catch the brightness of her hair and the softness of her face. She closed her eyes and waited.

The kiss began with the ghost-touch of hesitancy, and a faint warm scent like the air on a particularly glorious October eve. Saya felt vaguely like a child up too long past bedtime as Kyougo's lips moved away from hers to brush her cheek, smoothing away tear tracks. She rose up on tiptoe to lean into the second kiss, and this one was bittersweet with the tears of youth, which she found appropriate. And the kiss went on and on and she could feel something changing in it, something that affected her not at all but burned the man before her, made him pull her close and then a second later thrust her away with a gasp.

"How old are you?" he rasped, voice gone oddly hoarse.

"Sixteen," she answered, seeing no reason to lie.

"Let me take you home."

"But you're lonely."

"You don't know what you're doing!" The outburst startled her, and he winced as he saw her jump. "I'm sorry, Saya-san. Please, let me take you home. _Please."_

She stretched out a hand, pressed it over his frantically-beating heart. It looked small and white against the dark fabric of his shirt. "You don't want me to leave, so I'll stay," she replied, reaching with her other hand to press his hand over her heart. The dreams seemed to think it was a good idea, although privately she wondered how he would fail to notice the normal, steady rhythm of her heart, quite unlike that of a lover's.

Kyougo went very still, and he swallowed before asking, "Are you sure?"

"Yes," she murmured, and allowed him to lead her by the hand into his home. For once she had not needed the prompting of the dreams; after all, they had told her that her child must be conceived tonight. And as he laid her gently on his bed, and his touches on bare skin woke nothing in her, she reflected that such a good man would not fail to marry her to provide support for his child.

She would be able to stay at Togakushi Shrine until she died, and so she smiled at Kyougo, who smiled back before he fell asleep.


End file.
